Interview by Tim Van Schmidt

I got a call one day in 1998 from Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, still active in Dead affairs, offering me the chance to interview the band’s lyricist Robert Hunter.

Hunter was coming to my town with a solo show and since he didn’t do many interviews, this was a rare opportunity if I wanted it, Dennis explained. Well, duh. I took the call and arranged for some print space afterwards.

I connected with Hunter on the first day of his tour that year and I think he was pretty energized. It sounded like he was bumping around in his kitchen as I was talking to him and I’m not really sure why he was even doing the interview.

But I found him to be very talkative and he balanced a gregarious sense of humor with a sincere effort to answer my questions with true heart.

I’ve included a few excerpts from my original article from that time to add some more visuals to this. But the important thing here is a legendary songwriter talking about his process.